Large area wide band gap semiconductors are desirable for various electronic applications. The current state-of-the-art for most of these materials is limited to three to four inch diameter wafers because growing large area single crystal platforms is difficult and expensive. Moreover, a thermal expansion mismatch exists with available template platforms.
If inexpensive large area templates were available with thermal expansion coefficients that matched that of semiconductors of interest, then production costs would decrease dramatically and the field of applications would be significantly increased.
Accordingly, there is a need for the development of less expensive large area substrate platforms for wide band gap semiconducting materials.